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I pensieri belli di Sabryna

Page history last edited by Sabryna 14 years, 1 month ago

The Road

     Cormac McCarthy

 

     Heart-wrenching, disturbing, depressing, and stirring - I really loved this book, despite how depressing it is. I highly recommend people reading it. It is about a man and his son in a post-apocalyptic world and telling about their survival. There are a few things that irritated me when reading the book, for example his apparent ignorance to quotation marks and the fact that you don't need to use the word "and" five times in one sentence. As a writer, that really bugged me, but then again, he got away with it. It fit with the story somehow.

     He chose to not use names for them, merely called them "the man" or "Papa" and "the boy". Normally that would irritate me but I thought it was kind of interesting. Names add a personal interraction with the characters in the book, you know their name and their thoughts and it makes them seem more realistic and you can engage yourself more in the story. But the fact that he didn't use names for them I think emphasizes how...ghostly they have become and how tenuous their tie is to the world as they struggle to survive. 

     I wrote another mini story sort of thing for this book. For those of you who haven't read the book it will be a taste of what the book is like for the most part.

 

     Wind crept along the decrepit land, carrying wisps of ash as they moved along the scorched and broken earth. No longer did the color green or the word luscious exist in the dead world of soot and shattered dreams.

     Buildings sat hunched, empty shells of what they once were. Crawling about, hiding like insects, the bad guys, people so far fallen that they have resorted to cannibalism for survival, thrived in the abandoned warehouses, stores, and malls. She wasn’t supposed to be there, not alone. But her father had not returned and it had been nearly an hour. We were supposed to stick together, why did you change the rules daddy? You aren’t supposed to change the rules. Rules are there for a purpose, they mean something, they protect us. And you broke them!

     Growing steadily more and more fearful, she began to call out for her father, hoping to hear his soothing answer and see the bearded face and soft blue eyes. She paused in the open, too worried to care about the rules now. Never be in an open city. Always hide. Hide – are you hiding from me daddy? Where are you? Ash covered the road ahead and she could see humps and dips beneath it. She paused for a moment, staring at those sharp ridges, precarious peaks, and smooth, rolling tops. She began to panic; she didn’t want to walk through that, who knows what lay beneath the grey ash?

     “Daddy! Daddy where are you?!” She began to cry, her tears mixing with the soot on her face causing black lines to streak along her high cheek bones. Fear crept along her spine, poking and prodding at her body tauntingly, pushing her further and further into the throes of heart-wrenching terror.

     She turned about, looking around her with tears in her eyes. “Daddy,” she whimpered, searching for that familiar face among the ash and ruin. “Daddy please! Daddy – where are you?!”

     Ignoring her previous fears of not wanting to walk through the ash, she stumbled about clumsily, tripping over debris and bodies. Upon becoming aware of what exactly she walked over she paused, looking down in utter horror.

     “Daddy, please! Where are you daddy! Where are you?!” she screamed, trying to move as quickly as she could. Faces contorted in horror and sorrow stared back at her almost mockingly, reminding her further of the despair and loneliness surrounding her.

     Run, run, keep running. Daddy, please, I need you. I need you. Where are you? Daddy!

     No, no, you shouldn’t scream, you shouldn’t scream, the bad guys can hear you. But what if the bad guys have daddy? Or what if he is really far away? He needs to hear me. He needs to find me. Daddy, please, where are you?

     She began to sob, violent cries ripping through her thin body causing her to fall. Trying her best to ignore those charred forms, she crawled quickly until she reached open ground and remained hunched on her knees, rocking back and forth, looking about wildly for her father whom she needed so desperately.

     Buildings loomed around her, their silence horribly unbearable.

     “You weren’t supposed to go,” she moaned, “You weren’t supposed to leave me. You cannot leave me here!” Her sobbing began to build into horrible screams, climbing higher with her building anxiety and fear. She lurched to her feet but swung about, unsure of where to go. “Where did you go,” she whimpered between sobs. “Where did you go, daddy? Where did you go? Why did you leave me?”

     Finally she chose a direction and ran, her heart beating with the wild pump of her legs and arms. Ash flew up behind her, swirling in bulky clouds. As she ran she cried out for her father, wishing dreadfully for an answering call but finding none.

     A loud boom froze her in her place. “Daddy?” she said wistfully, looking around for the source of the noise. She stopped when she saw a man standing alongside one of the towering buildings. At first she thought him to be her father and took a step forward. Her mouth turned up in a relieved grin and her eyes sparkled. But he wasn’t her father. Something in his gaze, those dark eyes sparkling with hunger, chilled her to the bone and immediately she knew what he was: he was one of the bad guys.

     She stood for a moment longer and then whipped around, breaking into a run. He followed after her, his heavy feet thumping far too loudly upon the soot covered ground. She felt him gaining on her; soon he would be within arm’s reach.

     “DADDY! OH GOD DADDY PLEASE HELP ME!” she screamed, her cries of terror piercing the air, adding a chill to the already cold atmosphere. A stunning blow to the back of the head sent her tumbling to the ground. Then an equally strong, hungry grip on her arm and she was jerked into a cold body.

     Daddy. You promised. You promised you wouldn’t leave me. Daddy. She fell into frigid, terrifying darkness.

 

     And there it is...now it is unlikely that her father would have left her, particularly so close to the city, but I had that happen because I wanted to illustrate how dangerous that world really is and how one move can cost you dearly. 

 

     "Rich dreams now which he was loathe to wake from. Things no longer known in the world. The cold drove him forth to mend the fire. Memory of her crossing the lawn toward the house in the early morning in a thin rose gown that clung to her breasts. He thought each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the word and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not." pg. 131

 

     "If they saw different worlds what they knew was the same. That the train would sit there slowly decomposing for all eternity and that no train would ever run again." pg. 180

 

     "They began to come upon from time to time small cairns of rock by the roadside. They were signs in gypsy language, lost patterans. The first he'd seen in a while, common in the north, leading out of the looted and exahusted cities, hopeless messages to loved ones lost and dead. By then all stores of food had given out and murder was everywhere upon the land. The world soon to be largely populated by men who would eat your children in front of your eyes and the cities themselves held by cores of blackened looters who tunneled among the ruins and crawled from the rubble white of tooth and eye carrying charred and anonymous tins of food in nylon nets like shoppers in the commissaries of hell. The soft black tale blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes. Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and as unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond." pg. 180-181

     

     - I love the imagery in that passage and you can really see just how bad it is in that post-apocalyptic world of murder and starvation.

 

     "I think maybe they are watching, he said. They are watching for a thing that even death cannot undo and if they do not see it they will turn away from us and they will not come back." pg. 210

 

     "That good luck might be no such thing. There were few nights lying in the dark that he did not envy the dead."

     

     - Here he is referring to when Papa had just finished scouring a washed up boat for wood. He was talking about how lucky it was to have come across that but it was hard work and there was no way to tell how long they would survive.

 

     "Coughing. Coughing. He bent over, holding his knees. Taste of blood. The slow surf crawled and seethed in the dark and he htought about his life but there was no life to think about and after a while he walked back. He got a can of peaches from the bag and opened it and sat before the fire and ate the peaches slowly with his spoon while they boy slept. The fire flared in the wind and sparks raced away down the sand. He set the empty tin between his feet. Every day is a lie, he said. But you are dying. That is not a lie." pg. 237-238

 

     "I wasn't going to kill him, he said. But the boy didn't answer. They rolled themselves in the blankets and lay there in the dark. He thought he could hear the sea but perhaps it was just the wind. He could tell by his breathing that the boy was awake and after a while the boy said: But we did kill him." pg. 260

     

     - Here they had just experienced someone robbing them of all of their food and blankets. Papa had threatened the man, made him strip down until he was naked, to show him what it was like to have their life source taken away. The boy was upset by this because of the cruelty. Later he convinced Papa to return the clothing. The boy doesn't quite understand that there it is kill or be killed essentially. But, although frustrating that he doesn't comprehend that, I like that he is the more selfless and kind type, as most children are. It shows that he wasn't corrupted by a world that he was born into.

 

     "Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On thin backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery." pg. 286-287

     

     - I really like that ending passage. That is how Cormac decided to end the book and I found it rather fitting.

 

     Here is some music that I think captures some of the feel of the book. The sadness of it and the pain. These are youtube videos because I don't have these songs, but I chose them not for the video itself, just so you know. Some of them wouldn't exactly fit considering they show just one picture on most. And the songs I am choosing focus mostly on sorrow. I don't know as I really have any intense ones to describe the more horrifying and dangerous scenes. Well here they are:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiPP7fA53fM&feature=related

The one above I think does have a few fitting pictures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWTBWR8ofMQ&NR=1

It's a song from I Am Legend but I really like it and I think it does capture the feel of The Road, aside from the more intense parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBctuRQj45w

Now this is a song from the movie District 9. I hear sorrow and pain in the strings and the singers in the background later really add to the image. Whenever I listen to this I picture the empty, crumbling buildings, the bodies scattered, the ash covering the land.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXZ7EmTMGtw

I'm not sure how this one fits exactly...it is from the movie The Fourth Kind (which is a FREAKY movie by the way). In the very first song, which is what I am focusing on mainly, I picture another image much like the one from the above video. I like the woman's voice though, it is beautiful yet haunting. I suppose the second song fits with one of the scenes in which Papa and the boy are running from the cannibals that were in the house they had stumbled across. The third song, Hypnosis, always freaks me out when I hear it because I am remembering the scenes from the movie, and I think it could also apply to when Papa and the boy enter the house and find all of those people locked in the basement and then take off running from horror and when they see the cannibalistic people walking to the house (I realize that for those of you who haven't read this book, you have no idea what I'm talking about, but hey, maybe it will make you want to read the book out of curiosity). 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svP7soh2kTQ&NR=1

This song doesn't exactly fit the book in the sense as the others do. This song is much more happy, hopeful. There is still a tinge of sadness I think but certainly overall, the sound is hopeful. And the images that are shown in the video pertain to the book in that that is what was lost. The song makes me think of how much we would lose should the world go up in flames and leave nothing but ash as in the world of The Road. The images add to that thought in showing so many beautiful pictures of simple things like a lake or a road lined with virbantly colored trees.

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See No Evil by Robert Baer

 

     Now I had chosen this book to read for Mrs. Brown's cross-curricular project, but I ended up switching because there was no way I was going to finish it in time if I had stuck with it. It was a good book, just not my kind of book and didn't really grab my attention much. It is about Robert Baer, who is a CIA agent - this is a true story by the way - and it is about him and his part in dealing with the much of the Middle Eastern Conflicts and how he exposes some faults in government, at least that's what it said on the back. So, if you are interested at all in war, CIA, and corrupted governments then I would say read it.

     I did do a self-select project on it and, partially because I have nothing else to really post about this book on here and because I am curious to see what you guys think - if anyone is actually going to look at this page - I am going to post it up here. It is my own twist, with a metaphysical aspect that pertains to radicalists in the Middle East. If you like it, cool, if not, oh well. By the way, Bonn, I added to it a little bit.

 

     Crimson scales glistened, a sharp contrast between the caramel sands that slid beneath the coiling body. Smooth, fiery silk glimmered and reflected the light of the sun as a mirror, making pure, bright light flicker and dance over the curving dunes that rose, mimicking the graceful movement of the serpent.

     A man venturing too far from the safety of his city saw the shimmering light over the smooth ridges and stumbled upon the deadly creature. His body froze, muscles locking tightly as his eyes met the cold silver gaze sparkling like a blade in the sun. The serpent rose up in a striking pose and opened its jaws in a vicious hiss, fangs as black as death met the air causing it to sizzle and crackle.

     He stared at the creature before him with those sharp eyes, bloody scales, and deathly fangs. Hatred sat at his feet, growing evermore and hissing angrily. War glared at him and Death smiled a truly wicked grin, mockingly, reminding him of all that he was, of all that he had become.

     The serpent's hissing became more vicious as it sensed his fear and the mouth widened in a far more malicious grin. Teasingly, it lurched as if to strike but pulled back each time, yet the man could not move. He remained glued to his place upon the sand.

     In the name of faith he commited terrible atrocities to the human race, much like what the serpent intended to commit to him then. He felt his blood burning sinfully upon simply imagining those ebony fangs sinking into the soft flesh of his leg. They would not be cold as they looked for that kind of shadow possessed no frost or icy quality. He felt the flame, it made his eyes burn and water and quickened the already wild beat of his heart.

     Women and children screamed in agony, their cries rising with the climbing heat around him. Sorrow and anger dampened the air making it heavy, stifling. Muscles twitched restlessly in an attempt to flex enough to keep him standing; bones quaked, threatening to shatter beneath the immense weight of his misdeeds.

     Shadows rose from the golden sands, arachnid forms moving as smoke from the earth. Men and women, each with bloody eyes that looked on him accusingly, surrounded him, teeth chattering and voices shrieking, groaning, growling, and moaning.

     "No," he choked out, pleading with the evil, "Please."

     A woman with gloom draped over her head that writhed over her shoulders and ebony skin slid toward him, her body moving sinuously and scarlet lips curved in a malicious grin. She slashed at his throat, missing him by mere centimeters, and pulled away with mocking laughter upon tasting his fear.

     Eyes flashing with mischeif and dark intentions, she looked over her shoulder to the serpent which glowed magnificently among the dancing shadows and moved to her feet. Stretching out a slender arm, she picked up the snake smoothly and walked back to the man who had fallen to his knees.

     Ice and flame coursed into his body, each fighting for dominance as the beautiful, terrible woman placed her hand upon his shoulder. She leaned forward, bringing those bloody lips to his ear, and her steamy breath made him shudder in disgust and fear. The serpent hissed softly and hovered near his face. Those crystalline eyes felt like knives piercing his body as they looked over his quaking form.

     "What happens when there is no heaven to greet you?" she said in a smoky voice, macabre tones and malevolent whispers undulating like a wave. The gloomy figures stood around him, their hands brushing his skin hungrily, wishing to rip into his body and wrench away whatever life remained. His demonic captor smoothed her hand over his chest, those slender fingers curling, nails digging into his chest, ripping the fabric of his shirt.

     She took hold of his chin, tipping his head back and exposing his throat. The ghost of a man reached out, stroking the skin over the jugular with yearning obsession. Her laugh, hot and rich with malice, crept over his body making it tremble and burn. "What happens when only Hell meets you?"

 

     Well there you go. I did a twist on the whole I am doing this for my faith and also I got part of the idea from suicide bombers and how they imagine a heaven meeting them after death only this guy isn't dead, well yet at least...

 

 

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      Broken-Glass.jpg broken mirror image by 30stm_07

 

Girl, Interrupted

          Susanna Kaysen

 

     Life in McLean Hospital differs from life on the outside. Within those walls, chaos and psychosis echo faintly through the halls and in the rooms. Some patients sit in a chemically induced nearly vegitative state due to the meds nurses and doctors have provided them. Others, more defiant, wreak havoc on the nurses and therapists assigned to them.

     I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to be in an asylum. Even in the throes of psychosis you are still aware to some degree of your surroundings (though that degree may be VERY small for some). What would it be like to be insane and in an asylum? What would you see? What would you do? Take your typical idea of a mental hospital: patients walk around muttering to themselves; they sit and stare at a wall for hours on end or interact with seemingly nonexistant beings, fascinated or occupied by something hidden from sanity's eye; a man is playing checkers with himself or with another patient, he takes one of the black pieces and bangs it upon the checkerboard for no apparent reason - we've all seen it in movies yet most don't realize the truth of it. Many of us will never see the effects of insanity on a human being - and I should hope it stays that way in a sense. It is one thing to understand it somewhat and accept it for what it is, it's another to be constantly exposed to it. But still many see it as, oh it's just in the movies. I see their desire to hold onto that idea - particularly when you take into consideration some of the severely twisted people we have on this planet. Yet we must face reality and what lies in its composition.

     What if you were sane and placed in a mental hospital? How would things change then? Of course if you were indeed deemed mentally ill you would be off in your own world essentially and pay little attention to reality. But if you are perfectly normal in that good ole noggin of yours, how in the world would you be able to cope with all the chaos around you? I know I wouldn't be able to. Just the thought of being trapped in that chaos makes me shudder. I would go insane from being trapped in insanity, as I'm sure most people would. The human mind can only take so much before it breaks and all sense of morality, normalcy, and logic go out the window.

 

 

insanity.jpg insanity image by gburn11

 

I think this picture represents mental illness quite well. It is a bit creepy - which makes it perfect for psychosis. 

 

 

 

 

  • "Suicide is a form of murder - premeditated murder. It isn't something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with a suicidal state of mind."  pg. 36

 

  • "Nail scissors. Nail file. Safety razor. Penknife. (The one your father gave you when you were eleven.) Pin. (That pin you got when you graduated from high school, the one with two small pink pearls.) Georgina's gold stud earrings. (You can't be serious! It's the backs, see - nurse showed her the stubby darts of the backs - they're sharp, see). That belt. (My belt? What's going on here? The buckle was the culprit. You could maybe put your eye out with this part.) Knives. Well, you could make a case for knives. But forks and spoons too? Knives, forks, and spoons.

      We ate with plastic. It was a perpetual picnic, our hospital." pg. 56

 

         "      Velocity v.s. Viscosity 

 

       Insanity comes in two basic varieties: slow and fast.

       I'm not talking about onset or duration. I mean the quality of the insanity, the day-to-day business of being nuts.

      There are a lot of names: depression, catatonia, mania, anxiety, agitation. They don't tell you much.

      The predominant quality of the slow form is viscosity.

      Experience is thick. Perceptions are thickened and dulled. Time is slow, dripping slowly through the clogged filter of thickened perception. The body temperature is low. The pulse is sluggish. The immune system is half-asleep. The organism is torpid and brackish. Even the reflexes are diminished, as if the lower leg couldn't be bothered to jerk itself out of its stupor when the knee is tapped.

     Viscosity occurs on a cellular level. And so does velocity.

     In contrast to viscosity's cellular coma, velocity endows every platelet and muscle fiber with a mind of its own, a means of knowing and commenting on its own behavior. There is too much perception, and beyond the plethora of perceptions, a plethora of thoughts about the perceptions and about the fact of having perceptions. Digestion could kill you! What I mean is the unceasing awareness of the processes of digestion could exhaust you to death. And digestion is just an involuntary sideline to thinking, which is where the real trouble begins.

     Take a thought - anything; it doesn't matter. I'm tired of sitting here in front of the nursing station: a perfectly reasonable thought. Here's what velocity does to it.

     First, break down the sentence: I'm tired - wel, are you really tired, exactly? Is that like sleepy? You have to check all your body parts for sleepiness,a nd while you're doing that, there's a bombardment of images of sleepiness, along these lines: head falling onto pillow, head hitting pillow, Wynken, Blynken, and Nod, Little Nemo rubbing sleep from his eyes, a sea monster. Uh-oh, a sea monster. If you're lucky, you can avoid the sea monster and stick with sleepiness. Back to the pillow, memories of having mumps at age five, sensation of swollen cheeks on pillows and pain on salivation - stop. Go back to sleepiness.

     But the salvation notion is too alluring, and now there's an excursion into the mouth. You've been here before and it's bad. It's the tongue: Once you think of the tongue it becomes an intrusion. Why is the tongue so large? Why is it scratchy on the sides? Is that a vitamin deficiency? Could you remove the tongue? Wouldn't your mouth be less bothersome without it? There'd be more room in there. The tongue, now, every cell of the tongue, is enormous. It's a vast foreign object in your mouth.

     Trying to diminish the size of your tongue, you focus your attention on its components: tip, smooth; back, bumpy; sides, scratchy, as noted earlier (vitamin deficiency); roots -- trouble. There are roots to the tongue. You've seen them, and if you put your finger in your mouth you can feel them, but you can't feel them with the tongue. It's a paradox.

     Paradox. The tortoise and the hare. Achilles and the what? The tortoise? The tendon? The tongue?

     Back to tongue. While you weren't thinking of it, it got a little smaller. But thinking of it makes it big again. Why is it scratchy on the sides? Is that the vitamin deficiency? Youv'e thought these thoughts already, but now these thoughts have been stuck onto your tongue. They adhere to the existence of your tongue.

     All of that took less than a minute, and there's still the rest of the sentence to figure out. And all you wanted, really, was to decide whether or not to stand up.

     Viscosity and velocity are opposites, yet they can look the same. Viscosity causes the stillness of disinclination; velocity causes the stillness of fascination. An observer can't tell if a person is silent and still because inner life has stalled or because inner life is transfixingly busy.

     Something common to both is repetative thought. Experiences seem prerecorded, stylized. Particular patterns of thought get attached to particular movememnts or activities, and before you know it, it's impossible to approach that movement or activitiy without dislodging an avalanche of prethought thoughts.

     A lethargic avalanche of synthetic thought can take days to fall. Part of the mute paralysis of viscosity comes from knowing every detail of what's ahead and having to wait for its arrival. Here comes the I'm-no-good thought. That takes care of today. All day the insistent dripping of I'm no good. The next thought, the next day, is I'm the Angel of Death. This thought has a glittering expanse of panic behind it which is unreachable. Viscosity flattens the effervescence of panic.

     These thoughts have no meaning. They are idiot mantras that exist in a prearranged cycle: I'm no good, I'm the Angel of Death, I'm stupid, I can't do anything. Thinking the first thought triggers the whole circuit. It's like the flu: first a sore throat, then, inevitably, a stuffy nose and a cough.

     Once, these thoughts must have had a meaning. They must have meant what they said. But repetition has blunted them. They have become background music, a Muzak medley of self-hatred themes.

 

     Which is worse, overload or underload? Luckily, I never had to choose. One of the other would assert itself, rush or dribble through me, and pass on.

     Pass on to where? Back into my cells to lurk like a virus waiting for the next opportunity? Out into the ether of the world to wait for the circumstances that would provoke its reappearance? Endogenous or exogenous, nature or nurture -- it's the great mystery of mental illness."

 

     Despite the darkness of the environment in the mental hospital, Susanna still made some friends. Though they have their psychoctic tendencies, they are still people underneath and not everyone in the hopsital at the time was too severely mentally ill.

     McLean Hospital, a world unto itself. There, a healthy dose of discord is part of everyday life, though the nurses and staff try their best to find control. Most of the time they manage that, what with their quite effective drugs and rules. Susanna would sit and talk with a few of the patients most of the time, talking about life and it's problems.

 

     Girl, Interrupted is a thought provoking book and certainly interesting, though disturbing in some parts.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

                                                 

  

Sybil

 

        The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities

 

     I have not finished the book yet but so far it is... shocking, to say the least. Sybil Isabel Dorsett had sixteen personalities....SIXTEEN! They were actual personalities, essentially real people taking over and using the body of Sybil. They have their own image of themselves, specific behaviors, fears, joys, any and all of it. And not all of them are women! Two of the selves are men.

     I can't even imagine having one other personality let alone sixteen. What on earth would jar the brain into such a state as to need to create another personality? And what is the reason for it anyway? Is it some sort of twisted self-defense mechanism against what one cannot face otherwise? Or is it simply a effect of severe trauma that has morphed the mind into such a massively twisted and distorted state? It is mind-boggling to think about...

     And honestly, who knows? You can study it all you want, analyze it, break down everything into specific sections, setting the pieces into categories and giving laws to those pieces to explain away the source and the action. But really, there would still be so much more that we wouldn't understand. Humans are immensely complicated beings. The synchronization of mind, body, and soul is astonishing and extremely complex and honestly we have no hope of unlocking it fully.

     Sybil's experience is a detailed record and great for those who want to learn more about the psyche. I am sure many have analyzed her story and discovered many things, but it is just touching the surface. So much more is locked away and because of its intricacy and size, we are barred from access. At this point we don't have the ability to put the key to the lock, it is too far beyond our comprehension.

     I have to say, this book is not for everyone. There are some things that Sybil's mother did that are very, very messed up and it is very disturbing. So, if you are thinking about reading it, be warned. As a whole though, discarding the disgusting parts, the story is very interesting.

 

                Sybil Isabel Dorsett: a depleted person; the waking self.

                Victoria Antoinette Scharleau: nicknamed Vicky; a self-assured, sophisticated, attractive blonde; the memory trace of Sybil's selves.

                Peggy Lou Baldwin: an assertive, enthusiastic, and often angry pixie with a pug nose, a Dutch haircut, an a mischievous smile.

                Peggy Ann Baldwin: a counterpart of Peggy Lou with similar physical characteristics; she is more often fearful than angry.

                Mary Lucinda Saunders Dorsett: a thoughtful, contemplative, maternal, homeloving person; she is plump and has long dark-brown hair parted on the side.

                Marcia Lynn Dorsett: last name sometimes Baldwin; a writer and painter; extremely emotional; she has a shield-shaped face, gray eyes and brown hair parted on one side.

                Vanessa Gail Dorsett: intensely dramatic and extremely attractive; a tall redhead with a willowy figure, light brown eyes, and an expressive oval face.

                Mike Dorsett: one of Sybil's two male selves; a builder and a carpenter; he has olive skin, dark hair, and brown eyes.

                Sid Dorsett: one of Sybil's two male selves; a carpenter and a general handyman; he has fair skin, dark hair, and blue eyes.

                Nancy Lou Ann Baldwin: interested in politics as fulfillment of biblical prophecy and intensely afraid of Roman Catholics; fey; her physical characteristics resemble those of the Peggys.

                Sybil Ann Dorsett: listless to the point of neurasthenia; pale and timid with ash-blonde hair, an oval face, and a straight nose.

                Ruthie Dorsett: a baby; one of the lesser developed selves.

                Clara Dorsett: intensely religious; highly critical of the waking Sybil.

                Helen Dorsett: intensely afraid but determined to achieve fulfillment; she has light brown hair, hazel eyes, a straight nose, and thin lips.

                Marjorie Dorsett: serene, vivacious, and quick to laugh; a tease; a small, willowy brunette with fair skin and a pug nose.

                The Blonde: nameless; a perpetual teenager; has blonde curly hair and a lilting voice.

                The New Sybil: the seventeenth self; an amalgam of the other sixteen selves.

 

 

  •      "Who is the circumfrance, the center? the doctor wondered. Is Sybil the center or is one of these others?

             The search for the center was complicated further by the arrival the next day of two selves Dr. Wilbur had not met before. From the moment Vicky introduced these newcomers, the consulting room seemed so alive and there were so many impressions, that, gazing at the woman beside her, who at the moment was simultaneously Marcia Lynn and Vanessa Gail Dorsett, the doctor, who had thought herself inured to the surprises that a multiple personality had to offer, could not refrain from being excited by this sumultaneous sharing of the body. Nor could the doctor keep from speculating on how so many diverse characters could simultaneously flourish in the small, slight frame of Sybil Dorsett. The thought was fanciful because occupancy was not a matter of inhabiting space but of sharing being."

 

  •      "She was indeed a woman of mystery to Ramon; the years of analysis, however, had made her no mystery to herself. Her unconcsious stood clear, translucent, while that of most people was sealed in noncommunication. Her unconscious had paraded itself before her as perhaps no other human being's ever had."

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

 

....................      

     

     What?! How the heck can sex and lies be at all related to handwriting?!

     

     Well, you'd be surprised. Depending upon the curve and size of the loop of someone's g's and y's you can tell how sexual they are. No joke! Just by looking at someone's handwriting you can tell EVERYTHING about them. The way they grew up; whether their parents split up or were happily married and devoting; everything about their personality - liars, cheaters, lovers, nice, mean, naughty; how sexual they are - everything.

     Most think that you can't read much by a person's handwriting other than if they were angry (pressure of the pencil or pen) or if they were trying to scribble down something at the last minute.

          "Now, you may be thinking, 'How is it possible to tell so much from handwriting? After all, handwriting comes from the hand, not the brain. Right?'

           Wrong!!!

           Actually, your hand plays a very minor role in handwriting. If you injured your hand and had to learn to write with a pen in your mouth or between your toes, eventually you would produce almost the same handwriting that you produced before your injury. However, if your brain were injured, you would lose much of your writing ability. It is your brain - not your hand, foot, or mouth - that decides the size, shape, and slant of your handwriting. Handwriting is really 'brainwriting' and the marks you place on the paper are your 'brain prints'."

      Not what you expected, right?

      Going back to the sexual thing, if you see writing with a dominant lower zone (the lower zone is where the loops of f, g, j, p, q, y, and z sit), it's a sign of a writer with an "oversized need for material, physical, or sexual gratification." So if you have quite large loops for those letters in lower zone then there is a definite possibility that you have an oversized need for material, physical, and sexual gratification.

      If the upper zone (the tops of capital letters and upward extensions of the lowercase letters f, h, k, l, and t) is dominant, these writers "live in the world of ideas" and if the middle zone (where sits lowercase a, c, e, i, m, n, o, r, s, u, v, w, and x) is dominant it means that the writer is a "social creature whose life is centered on the here and now".

      It all correlates to areas of the human body. Upper zone, head or brain; middle zone, heart, lungs, and other internal organs; and the lower zone - well I'm sure you can guess. Depending upon the dominance of the regions, it says quite a bit about a person's character.

      There is even something in a person's handwriting called a "pitchfork" or more commonly "devil's fork" (for clarification this usually shows up in the form of a t). If you see this in someone's handwriting it is a sign for you to stop whatever you are doing and RUN! "This fiendish formation appears subconsciously in the handwriting of writers who feel bedeviled with satanic obsessions and fantasies." This was found in the signature - which can tell you A LOT about a person - of Keith Hunter Jesperson, also known as "The Happy Face Killer." No one had any clue that this man could have been a murderer at heart. For years he fooled those around him into thinking he was a nice, fun-loving guy, a long-haul trucker from Canada. After killing his girlfriend, Jesperson wrote a letter to his brother admitting that he was a serial killer. He was convicted of murdering three women in Oregon and Washington and is serving the first of three consecutive life sentences in Oregon. So that "devil's fork" is bad news.

      It is pretty dark, I know, but is good knowledge to have. Michelle Dresbold is possibly the best handwriting analyst in the world (certainly in the country) and in this book she gives a "fun super-condensed mini course on the basic conceptes of handwriting profiling." You learn some key things to look out for or things that are simply fascinating in a person should you happen to glance at their handwriting. Even though some of the stories in this book are quite dark, she manages to slip in her humor which makes reading this book quite entertaining at times.

 

      If you are at all interested in psychology, are curious about a person's personality, or are simply curious about your own handwriting, I highly suggest reading this book.

It may just save your life...

 

 

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

 

Eat Pray Love

          by Elizabeth Gilbert 

 

     Attraversiamo - let's cross over. In Italian it is such a simple word, people say it to their partners or friends when they want to cross the street. But that simple word can take on so many different meanings. I feel this word describes the book in many ways. Elizabeth Gilbert goes on a journey to heal herself after a heart wrenching, soul crushing divorce followed by a heartbreaking love affair. She journeys through Italy, sampling the food and culture and learning the most beautiful language. Attraversiamo - she crosses over into another world, another life.

     After four months of indulgence in delicious food, lasting friendships, and Roman architecture, she makes her way to India where she spends four months in an Ashram. Once more she is crossing over into another world, another life. Rome was full of food, passion, and beauty, but she has come to a new place now. India, though still quite beautiful, has such a different atmosphere. The people are conscientious, loving, kind. The atmosphere of the Ashram is silent, calming, and cleansing. Liz finds relief and healing in worship and meditation. She beats back Depression and Loneliness and finds peace.

     I have yet to read the third section of this book where Liz journeys to Indonesia where she will spend four months with a medicine man.

     This book really is great. When I began reading it I was only in a few pages and already I loved it. Liz's writing is personal, it pulls you in to her mind and thoughts and makes them your own. She can make you angry, sad, or joyous, and her experiences become your own. You cross over into her world...

 

(By the way, if you have any desire to go to Italy, this book will make you want to go VERY, VERY badly)

 

Comments (24)

Allia said

at 8:38 am on Oct 5, 2009

i pensieri belli di Sabryna? Explain yourslef. lol

Sabryna said

at 8:39 am on Oct 5, 2009

Haha. It means "the beautiful thoughts of Sabryna" in Italian.

Allia said

at 8:40 am on Oct 5, 2009

thats so cool! i love it!

Sabryna said

at 8:51 am on Oct 5, 2009

:)

Allia said

at 8:52 am on Oct 5, 2009

:) :)

Coe said

at 8:31 am on Oct 6, 2009

Would you recommend this book?

Sabryna said

at 8:37 am on Oct 6, 2009

I would definitely recommend it. It's different from what I usually read but I like it. Its about the internal conflicts of a middle aged woman who isn't satisfied with the way her life is, basically...I guess. It's different and pretty interesting..

Allia said

at 8:40 am on Oct 6, 2009

can i read it after you're finished with it??

Sabryna said

at 8:41 am on Oct 6, 2009

Haha. Sure. :)

paul bonnell said

at 1:37 pm on Oct 18, 2009

I'd always thought the book seemed a little chick-flickish until I read it. It made me want to go to Italy, learn/re-learn French; focus, pray, meditate, develop the habits of quietness; and live simply and directly, as she does in Bali. It's still chick-flickish, but in that way that even dudes should relate to. And you don't have to travel the world to take an internal journey.

Sabryna said

at 2:44 pm on Nov 6, 2009

Yes! Exactly. Haha, yea, it is chick-flickish, but as you said, guys can relate to it.

Angela said

at 9:33 am on Nov 23, 2009

Sex, Lies, and Handwriting. That book seems really cool. I think that I might read that. Reading that makes me want to analyse my own handwriting to see if I might be a serial killer! :s

Lorena said

at 9:39 am on Nov 23, 2009

I read that book! It was very weird but also very intersting and pretty sweet to think about how you can see someone's character by looking at how they write.

Sabryna said

at 9:39 am on Nov 23, 2009

It is a pretty awesome book in my opinion. Well I highly doubt you are but, hey, you could rule it out at least. :)

Sabryna said

at 9:41 am on Nov 23, 2009

Eh, yea, I guess it is a bit odd. But I really enjoyed it and yes, it is very interesting and pretty fascinating. A little disturbing in some parts though...but overall good. :)

Ben said

at 9:43 am on Nov 23, 2009

Yeah, I have read that book before. Tells you a lot about yourself and others.

Sabryna said

at 9:49 am on Nov 23, 2009

Yes it does.

Erin said

at 9:23 am on Nov 24, 2009

This looks like a very good book :D Go sabryna haha

Coe said

at 9:28 am on Nov 24, 2009

ahhhh you can tell something about personality from handwriting? Maybe reading the book would save your life

Sabryna said

at 9:29 am on Nov 24, 2009

It is a good book. Haha thanks.

Sabryna said

at 9:30 am on Nov 24, 2009

Yup. EVERYTHING about a person's personality. It is pretty intense. And yes, if you know what to look for, it definitely can.

RachelTy said

at 9:22 am on Dec 8, 2009

I like your book prefence and I think that I might read you book, "Eat Pray Love".

Sabryna said

at 7:58 pm on Dec 11, 2009

Why thank you. :) It is a really good book.

paul bonnell said

at 11:10 pm on Mar 27, 2010

Thoughtful posts and book discussion, Sabryna.

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